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Golden Algae: They Hunt, They Kill, They Cheat

By Guest PostJanuary 23, 2013Sciencealgae bloom, golden algae, single celled algae, toxic algae, toxicity, toxin production

Cheating is a behavior not limited to humans, animals and plants. Even microscopically small, single-celled algae do it, a team of UA researchers has discovered.

Humans do it, chimpanzees do it, cuckoos do it – cheating to score a free ride is a well-documented behavior by many animals, even plants. But microscopically small, single-celled algae? Yes, they do it too, biologists with the University of Arizona’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology have discovered. (more…)

Martian Crater May Once Have Held Groundwater-Fed Lake

By Guest PostJanuary 22, 2013Sciencearabia terra, carbonate, clay mineral, compact reconnaissance, crism, early evolution, flat rock, groundwater, hydrothermal fluids, imaging spectrometer, joseph michalski, lake environment, layered, mars, mars orbiters, mars reconnaissance orbiter, martian crater, martian history, mclaughlin crater, meteor impact, mro, nasa spacecraft, non acidic conditions, potential habitat, red planet, rich zurek, scott murchie, spectrometer data, subsurface, subsurface habitability, underground water, wet underground environment

PASADENA, Calif. — A NASA spacecraft is providing new evidence of a wet underground environment on Mars that adds to an increasingly complex picture of the Red Planet’s early evolution.

The new information comes from researchers analyzing spectrometer data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which looked down on the floor of McLaughlin Crater. The Martian crater is 57 miles (92 kilometers) in diameter and 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) deep. McLaughlin’s depth apparently once allowed underground water, which otherwise would have stayed hidden, to flow into the crater’s interior. (more…)

Costly Breast Cancer Screenings Don’t Add up to Better Outcomes

By Guest PostJanuary 22, 2013Healthanees chagpar, breast cancer, breast cancer incidence, brigid killelea, cary gross, copper team, cost of screening, geographic regions, heather gold, jama network publication, jessica long, joseph ross, mammography, maysa abu khalaf, medicine, rong wang, screenings, treatment, united states, variation, xiaomei ma, yale cancer center, yale school

Even though Medicare spends over $1 billion per year on breast cancer screenings such as a mammography, there is no evidence that higher spending benefits older women, researchers at Yale School of Medicine found in a study published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

Led by Dr. Cary Gross, associate professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale, the study sought to provide a comprehensive understanding of breast cancer expenditures that incorporate the cost of screening and associated work-up, as well as treatment. They assessed overall national costs, as well as variation in costs across geographic regions. (more…)

Flying Test Bed: New Aerial Platform Supports Development of Lightweight Sensors for UAVs

By Guest PostJanuary 22, 2013Scienceairborne payloads, electronic scanning, lightweight sensors, radar package, self guided uavs, sensing technology, uavs, unmanned aerial vehicle

A research team at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is developing an airborne testing capability for sensors, communications devices and other airborne payloads. This aerial test bed, called the GTRI Airborne Unmanned Sensor System (GAUSS), is based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by Griffon Aerospace and modified by GTRI. (more…)

Study Explains Skin’s Response to UVA Light

By Guest PostJanuary 22, 2013Healthdna damage, melanin production, phototransduction pathway, skin cells, ultraviolet light, uva exposure, uva light

Researchers have strengthened their understanding of how skin cells called melanocytes sense ultraviolet light and act to protect themselves with melanin. In a new study, they report experiments showing that an ion channel well-known elsewhere in the body for its chemical sensitivity, plays a central role in this process. (more…)

Evolution of Human Resources

By Guest PostJanuary 21, 2013Economybeebe medical center, bejoy philip, catherine halen, clayton hall, employee development, employer relations, empowerment, entrepreneurship, evolution, george irvine, human resources, human resources management, john sawyer, jpmorgan chase, kimberlee krupa, lerner college, lynn sydnor epps, organization, organizational development, personnel department, roundtable topic, siemens corporation, ud, university of delaware

Future of organizational development Employee Development Roundtable topic

Remember the personnel department? It’s an old fashioned concept now with its focus on record-keeping and employee policies, evolving into “human resources management” in the latter half of the 20th century.

But the future of human resources is also changing. Panelists and attendees at the University of Delaware’s Employee Development Roundtable in December discussed how organizations will develop their employees in the future, how local and global business pressures will affect the field, how technology will change employee development and what organizational development professionals should do now to shape the future. (more…)

Mating Swarm Study Offers New Way to View Flocks, Schools, Crowds

By Guest PostJanuary 21, 2013Scienceadulthood, biology, bird flock, coherent system, collective animal motion, collective motion, degree of modularity, douglas h kelley, external force, group behavior, high speed cameras, insect swarm, mating swarm, mechanical engineering, midge fly, MIT, nicholas t ouellette, position, quantitative data, swarm behavior, synchronized, three-dimensional

The adulthood of a midge fly is decidedly brief — about three days. But a new study of its mating swarm may yield lasting benefits for analyses of bird flocks, fish schools, human crowds and other forms of collective animal motion.

“This is a field where there’s been almost no quantitative data,” said Nicholas T. Ouellette of the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, principal investigator of the research, published Jan. 15 in the journal Scientific Reports. “What we’ve been able to do is put this in the laboratory, and that lets us take as much data as we want.” (more…)

New Insights into the ‘Borderline Personality’ Brain

By Guest PostJanuary 21, 2013Healthanger, anthony c ruocco, borderline personality disorder, bpd, brain function, brain region, chaotic relationship, cycle, data, diagnosis and treatment, disorders, emotion dysregulation, emotional reaction, frontal part, function of brains, hallmark symptom, hyperactive, insula, major depression, mental illness, negative emotions, neural circuits, people with bpd, sadness, scarborough, suicide, university of toronto

TORONTO, ON — New work by University of Toronto Scarborough researchers gives the best description yet of the neural circuits that underlie a severe mental illness called Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and could lead to better treatments and diagnosis.

The work shows that brain regions that process negative emotions (for example, anger and sadness) are overactive in people with BPD, while brain regions that would normally help damp down negative emotions are underactive. (more…)

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